Welcome to the Burkina Faso 2012 Site team blog. See what we're up to while we are in Burkina Faso and check out how we are serving God through our talents and projects to the Burkinabé people. Enjoy!
These past two days have been the typical breakfast by 6:30 mornings for Charlie, Kate. and I (Jean) to be ready to head over the center to get working by 7:15. The KWHR guys have been sleeping in a little later claiming to have everyone up by 7:20ish or so we've been told.
So far, Dave, Kevin, and Dr. Fish have made significant progress in debugging some of their software issues and have been able to start testing and prepping for installations on a couple different homes in this SIM compound. Because some of the equipment required to do some testing only worked on 120V outlets (the house the guys are staying in use 220V), the KWHR team asked around and found out that the Walsh's home had 120V. As the Walsh family is currently in the U.S., the KWHR team borrowed keys and decided to haul their equipment over there temporarily to get some testing with the meter done. More exciting news to come about the preliminary results.
As for the tricycles, a lot of progress has been made in continuing to implement the new axle design for the existing electric tricycles. Yesterday, after much clamping, cutting with hacksaws, hammering, tightening, wheel building, welding, etc., Charlie and Jean were able to successfully mount and install the new axles on Yembapou's trike. Compared to the old axle set, this new design has axles almost double the diameter of the previous design (going from 12mm to 20mm) in addition to incorporating higher quality hubs. Though this solution is not necessarily meant to be a long-term solution, as the hubs used are fairly expensive mountain bike hubs, we are hoping this should extend the life of the axles significantly, at least until we find a more sustainable fix for our problem. In addition to axle work, we were able to finish installing the battery pack for Etienne’s green trike which is now set and ready to go. Next week, we are looking at finishing up making a couple tweaks on Yempabou’s axles and then working on installing new axles on Djebade’s electric tricycle (built by the site team in the summer of 2010).
Etienne and Jean
On Wednesday Kate went out on a moto with one of the traveling therapists from the Center to do home visits. We made six stops out in remote areas, where children we visited were blind, deaf, had epilepsy, or cerebral palsy. All of the families were very welcoming, offering us seats in the shade while we were there. It was a very different and tiring experience but one that I’m glad I had.
In other more cultural news, we were invited to have dinner with the Johnsons and the pastor of a local French church and his family. We experienced a traditional meal of toh (a millet or corn-based mush type thing which is a staple here in most African homes) and a tomato-based chicken dish to dip the toh in. We also had the opportunity to visit the gift shop at the center as well as the market to pick up some gifts and other interesting things. A tailor came by this evening to get measurements for people getting some clothes made. We’ll hope those turn out well.
This weekend we’ll be heading out to a game park nearby to check out some African wildlife!
1 comments:
Exciting work!!!
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